Worn out tools

This will be the Venue's last Sunday.

I watched so many miracles take place in are pre-launch phase of this that I'm sure we were blessed by God. From nowhere we gathered an impossible amount of money to make this work, the core team came together with no effort, and are location just fell into our laps. Every need we had was met, except one.

We never managed to get a healthy number of people signed on to our vision. We gathered a handful of really awesome people, but it stayed at just a handful. We didn't have enough people to offer any kid's church to ages above 5, yet we were trying to reach young families. We never had the volunteers to take over the labor intensive tasks of set up and break down or neighborhood advertising, leaving our pastoral staff overwhelmed with all the tasks to be done in one week see how we all pull 40+ hours a week in our regular jobs. Our weekly offerings were way more than I could believe, but still it just met our obligations with nothing left forcing us to dive into savings for any outreach or advertising.

All of that wouldn't have matter though if we were doing what we set out to do, reach the last with the gospel. The purpose of this church was to reach the lost and provide them a place to connect that would feel like family, but in order to do that we needed more than just our pastoral team. We weren't doing this, so the question was why are we doing this? We decided to give God time to work and wait to see while we continued with outreach and advertising, but after the better part of a year nothing has changed.

I don't feel like I've really heard from God on this for ages. If He wants this saved we'll listening. The truth is, I've known a lot better pastors than me who have had failed church plants. I think sometimes God sends us through things just to train us for things He's going to do later on down the road. I think that sucks, but I'm open to it.

It's strange to put down something that's been the center of your life for the last 6 years, but it is also freeing. For the first time since I became a follower of Jesus I have no idea what I'm suppose to do, oddly it feels freeing. So, now what? I'm going to take a three to six month break from ministry, maybe a little longer. I'm going to go to church with my friends and just spend my time listening. When God is ready to call me back up I'll answer, but for now it's time to live again.

I guess I'm going to change the title of the blog soon. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep writing or not, I guess we'll see how it goes.

"Is it you now, to watch the things you've gave your life to broken, stoop and build them up with with worn out tools?" - Kipling (sort of)

Nothing Left to Prove

I've been without Internet for awhile due to the whole moving into a new house thing. Things have been really crazy lately with all the new changes in my life, but I am really happy where I am for now.

I have a confession though. The one thing in my life that bothers me right now is the whole lead pastor thing. I don't like preaching. If I was being totally honest, I haven't been excited about preaching in well over a year, even before the church plant. It worried me at first, but I thought that when we started the church my passion for it would return and it never did. I'm not supposed to feel this way, right?

I used to love doing it, but really I think the real reason why I loved it was that I loved proving to people that God could use me. My whole Christian life has been people telling me what I can't do and God using me anyway. They told me I would never make it as a youth leader, never make it through college, never make it as a pastor, never plant a church and yet by the grace of God I've done all these things, even if not so well. Ever time I pulled through on something that people thought I'd fail at I felt like I proved that God was with me no matter what people thought about me. I think I was really trying to prove to myself that God was with me no matter what I thought about myself. I guess in the end it all came down to pride.

So here I am feeling like I have nothing left to prove. I have finally came to the realization that no matter who you are or how messed up your life is, God can still use you. Thus, why I am I so surprised that God has used me? As for other people, I don't no why I should care what they think anyway, the people that really matter in my life are going to be there if I fail or succeed, the rest can think about me what they wish.

The problem is that I don't feel like a very good lead pastor now. I don't like preaching, I'm not much of a people person, and I don't have much available time for church things through out the week. I feel like I need more time to straighten everything out, like I'm too young and not experienced enough. Yet, here I am running a church that God placed me over despite myself.

That's the thing that gets me, no matter how much of a mess I might be, it doesn't seem to worry God that much. I don't know if I should be a pastor or not, yet I know God has placed me here for now. So if you'll excuse me, I have a message to write.

Ode to a Truck

Today is a sad day. I found out that the U-Haul truck that we've been using to transport our gear back and forth is no more. We will now be using a newer truck with less miles and less wear. Up until today our "church" truck was a 10 year old U-Haul with about 300,000 miles on it. It was covered with graffiti and scratches. The A/C hardly worked and the ramp took amazing acts of strength to retract everyday. Yet, it never failed us. Every Sunday we had it it did its job.

In a way I think that truck fit our church just right. Here's to you old friend, rest well, you've earned it.

Of All The Things I've Lost...

Things that I have lost since planting a church:

1. One perfectly good utility knife.
2. One defective folding chair.
3. The church checkbook.
4. Twenty-five pounds (just when you thought I couldn't get any hotter).
5. My delusions (well, most of them anyways).
6. My faith in Christian leadership (I swear, sometimes it feels like we are arguing about the color of the wallpaper as the house is burning down around us).
7. The better part of my sanity.
8. My ability to care about trivial matters.
9. My garage (it's still there it's just loaded with chairs and tables and speakers, oh my).
10. My patience with people who like to talk, but do nothing.

Things that I have found since planting a church:

1. Things in the people around me that I never saw before.
2. A new job.
3. The confidence to do what I'm called to.
4. The church checkbook (It was on the roof of the car).
5. That I don't have everything figured out yet.
6. A trust that I've never known before.
7. Half a bag of chips stuck under the seat of my car (not bad really).
8. That audacity and the ability to look like you know what you're doing even when you don't can take the place of experience and skill 90% of the time.
9. The peace that comes from knowing that no matter what happens God will be there in the morning.
10. The things that really matter.

A Story In The Darkness

I was thinking about the great stories today. You know, the kind you loved as a kid. The ones that now as adults still make us feel something inside that we can't place our fingers on. The stories in which the most unlikely of heroes find themselves facing impossible odds and willingly go into the most dangerous of places, not because they were unafraid of losing their lives, but rather because they were terrified of losing something that made life have value. Sometimes it was the love of a woman, other times it was the protection of their home or loyalty to their friends, but whatever the valuable thing was the idea of losing it was enough to make them face their worse fears head on.

When I first began the process of planting The Venue the people above me asked that I write down the things I valued the most. Looking back, I think it was a silly assignment, not because it isn't important to know your values, but rather because how can you know what you value until those things have been tested?

Since planting this church just a few short months ago I have questioned many things about my world view and what I find to be of importance. At the same time I have found myself faced with fears and challenges that I have never known before. I have come to the conclusion that a lot of things I used to think were important are not and many of the things I never paid attention to before mean a lot to God. It has been an unsettling process and I'm sure that it has only just begun, but I'm already starting to discover the things and people for which I'm willing to face and fight the darkness for.

Life isn't the same as a fairy tale (at least not like the ones we know) and failure is a real possibility. In fact I will probably fail many times before my part in the story is done and for the first time in my life I can handle that, as long as I fail while attempting to protect the things that truly have value and not the things that matter nothing to God.

One Less Responsibility

This is Wednesday which means that usually I be getting ready to drive over to our mother church to facilitate a bible college class for a group of people. I found out last week that they no longer need me to do this. Although I liked the people I taught and I enjoyed doing it I couldn't be happier about being let off the hook.

I have so much stuff going on right now that one less thing to do makes a real difference. I'm starting to see that the things I commit to need to few and in direct relation to the mission I've been given right now. I don't have the time or energy to focus on too many little things even if they are good little things.

So instead of going to lead a class tonight, I'm going to go listen to our worship team practice. It is still something to do, but it doesn't require any work on my part and it helps me focus on the task at hand. With any luck maybe I'll get to drop a couple more responsibilities before the year is over.

Mailer Revisted

We've decided to get another mailer put together to go out in June. We want to continue to get our name out in the community and in my mind advertisement is money well spent.

Sometime this week we'll sit down and start playing with designs. This is always the scary part for me, I want us to stand out without being cheesy. I especially don't want to look like every other church out there, our mantra has always been, "be yourselves." The question is what does being ourselves look like when you put it on a postcard and send it through the mail to everyone in your neighborhood?

Either way it'll be fun to play around with the thing and see what we come up with. Hopefully whatever we come up with will be inviting to the people who need us and a warning to those who don't.

Moving

I helped Tyson and Bekah move into their new house yesterday. I thought it was going to be really tough since we were doing it after we did set-up, tear-down, and then unload the truck, but it wasn't that bad. When me and Autumn move in August it's going to be a slightly different story.

There is something that feels good about a move. Maybe it's the idea of change or the completion of something expected. Either way it makes things feel new (maybe that's why I seem to do it every two years on average).

The future is more of a mystery to me now than it's every been and I have more on my plate now than ever before, but life looks good. I'm happier than I've ever been and I'll take the challenges as they come. They never told me that the uncertainty of what's to come mixed with the possibility of failure can actually be an exciting thing. Maybe that sounds as crazy to you as it does to me, but being a little crazy never hurts when you are planting churches.

Oh The Things You'll Do

I've read a lot of blogs from church planters who are still in the pre-launch phase and it seems what most of them talk about most is raising money. I can understand this as money was a big worry for me when we first began, but if planting a church has taught me anything this far, it has taught me that it is possible to make it on very little start-up cash as long as you can manage three things:

1. Having a volunteer church staff in the beginning. This includes the lead pastor!
2. Having a small core group committed to tithing faithfully to the plant.
3. Having the above mentioned people be naturally resourceful and flexible.

In regards to being flexible, as far as my own life goes I've found myself doing a lot of things in the planting of this church that no one ever told me I'd be doing when I was in Bible College. I knew a lot of different jobs go into the title of Pastor, but these are somethings that I've had to do that isn't found in many church planting manuals:

Truck Driver - Somehow I've found myself driving a 14 foot truck loaded with sound gear once a week. This is especially disturbing when you think about all the things I've destroyed through the years with just a compact car. Thank God for good insurance.

Website Designer - We could either afford to to do advertising or to have a website built. Since website isn't much good unless people know about it. So, we paid for advertising and I taught myself HTML. Our site may not be the greatest out there and I'm sure there are mistakes in the coding in places, but it's doing it's job right now and it'll work until we get some more cash flow coming in.

Chair Tester - We wanted to test our church chairs to see how much weight they could handle the other night, so some how I found myself sitting in a chair with two men on my lap. It wasn't a pretty picture and unfortunately it is now a picture (I won't be posting it here though, so don't ask). It wasn't my proudest moment, but we proved that the chairs could take a lot of weight and it made Bekah happier than I've seen her in quite awhile so I guess it was worth it.

Set Designer - This is actually more Jason than me, but I've found myself helping him (and by helping I mean holding his tools) build things that I don't think most pastors have had to make. Partitions are a must have for a portable church when you find yourself in a bigger space than what you need, but they are incredibly expensive. We were donated partitions early on, but before we could pick them up the deal fell through. Jason decided to make his own and I personally like them better than the professional ones. Sometime in the near future I'll post pictures and talk about these a little more, but for the purpose of this posting let's just say that you can think your way out of a lot of problems if you have some time and a guy who is handy with a chop saw.

Easter Lessons

We had our first Easter service today and it went great! I'm amazed by how many people get blown away by what we are doing here. We didn't blow up big like some churches but every Sunday the people who check us out tell me how impressed they are with us. People that I would've never guessed would want to be a part of this church keep coming back every week. At the rate we've been retaining, we are well on our way to making an impact in our area.

We had a couple bumps this morning, nothing major that we couldn't handle, but it's made for a few good Easter lessons.

Lesson #1 - When moving equipment in a truck tie down everything - Jason usually oversees the loading of the truck, but he was with his in-laws last night, so Mike, Tyson, (not Mike Tyson) and myself were on our own. When we got to the school this morning we discovered that one of our five foot tall powered speakers had fell over on top one of the candelabras. Our concern was for the speaker and not the candelabra, drop them too much and the amps inside powered speakers will disconnect causing you to have to send it back to the manufacturer for repair. You have to pay for the shipping by the pound and those things weigh more than a compact car. Thankfully the speaker was fine, I can't say the same for the candelabra though.

Lesson #2 - Don't settle for cheap chairs - We bought cheap folding chairs because we were just about out of money and needed something other than the benches the school provides for seating. This morning during the last song before we dismissed one of our chairs collapsed out from under someone. The dude wasn't even that big of a guy, I just think the chair wasn't meant for the stress of a mobile church. Anyway It happen to a guy that is really cool, it wasn't a large problem, but there are and will be people at our church that need a sturdier chair if you know what I mean. We will be ordering stackable chairs sometime this week.

Lesson #3 - People want something real - This wasn't inspired by a problem we had this morning, but its something that God reinforced in us today. The number of people that told one of us that we are not what they expected from a church is amazing. They told us when we started that we were going to be a nice church for young people, but what we are seeing is that we are attracting all ages and backgrounds. It turns out we're a nice church for anyone that needs something different in their lives.

So that was Easter. It will be incredible to see what the next one looks like. Now I'm going to get some rest I'm tired and my wife is being induced at 4am tomorrow, looks like next week there will be at least one more new face at The Venue.

Brand New

I went to the Brand New concert last night at The House of Blues. They were a lot better than I thought they were going to be, I need to check out more of their stuff. They came off with so much energy and so much passion for what they do that it really challenged me to have the same for what I'm called to do. I don't mean a fake passion like a bad televangelist, but something real that comes from the heart of who I am.

The problem is I'm a pretty reserved person. I've never made it a habit to let what I'm thinking or feeling to show on the outside. Even last night when I was having a great time I don't think it showed outwardly at all.

The funny thing is that among our small group at The Venue people seem to be getting excited about what we are doing. The fire is catching despite me. Now all we have to do is keep it going so that it can spread to others and we can start getting the work done.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've only had 3 hours of sleep and I need to finish my Easter message.

Must Read Blog For Church Planters

My favorite blogger just moved her blog here to Blogger. Alright, I'm a little bias because she is one of my best friends and our Connection Pastor here at The Venue, but I think that anyone that wants more insight into church planting should check her page out.

Most of the church planting blogs out there are written by male lead pastors. When you do find a female church planter blog it is usually written by a pastor's wife. These are both good things and I enjoy reading them, but they only represent a very small portion of the church planting experience.

Bekah is a young woman, an associate pastor, and a church planter called to Las Vegas all rolled into one (Any one of these could be considered scandalous in some denominations). I enjoy reading her blogs because no matter if she's talking about church or just everyday life you get a different perspective from a genuine person who remains real although God has placed her in an unreal situation.

Go see what I'm talking about. Her link is in my links section or just click here.

What Staff Meeting Should Look Like

Our staff video is now on Youtube. Check it out to see what Las Vegas church planting looks like . STAFF VID

Fear vs. Faith

...Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God... (Hebrews 11:16)

Easter is coming. Soon I'll be preaching almost every week. Soon new people will start showing up. Soon there will be volunteers and groups and more decisions to be made. Soon I'll have to start acting like the thing I am, a Lead Pastor. These things don't really scare me. They used to but now it has became kinda of a given fact in my mind that this is what I'm called to do, so I might as well get over my insecurities and get the job done.

I know that hard times will come. I know that if we are doing what we are supposed to be doing we will be attacked and whereas that might not be a comforting thought I can deal with attacks.
I'm not afraid of the church failing, that's in God's hands and I don't think He brought us this far just to leave us stranded. These things are fine and I knew what I signed up for.

The one thing that really does scare me is Hebrews chapter eleven. You get this roll call of great people of faith and then right in the middle you get this half verse that says, Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. You know what this means? There are people out there that God is ashamed to be identified as being their God.

I grew up with a family that was ashamed of me most of my life. I wasn't the person they wanted me to be, I didn't care about the things they cared about. I wasn't like them.Now that I'm older I see that it was I who should've been ashamed of them, but I remember the feeling. Now, my worst nightmare is to not be the person God wants me to be, to not care about the things He cares about. To not be like Him.

The second thing I fear is letting my friends down. I've mentioned before how God has blessed me by letting me plant this church with my best friends. They are the people that God has given my to keep my sanity intact (what passes for my sanity anyways). They are the most real people I know but at the same time they are the people who would give up anything in service to God. The world isn't worthy of them and yet for some reason they've chosen to follow me on this project. To fail them is not an option.

This is my motivation. These are the reasons why I continued to strive when things looked impossible. This is why no sermon ever feels like it's completely done. For those church planters out there that actually read this, I wish I could tell you that it has always been faith that has gotten me through the hard times in this, but that wouldn't be honest. Sometimes it was fear. The fear of standing before my God one day and saying, "I couldn't", "I wouldn't", or "I'm sorry." The fear of backing down when my friends needed me to be strong, or betraying the trust that people have placed in me for what ever crazy reasons.

Maybe this fear is a kind of faith, or maybe I'm just rationalising. Either way, The Venue is now planted and God has brought me to the place He promised. I'll work out the details as I go.

Oh, and by the way, I still think flying insects are scary too.

The Mailer is Printed

Well, I got the samples of our mailer today and I'm pretty happy. I know the design isn't for everyone but I wanted something that would stick out and at the same time gave people a taste of who we are.

The mailers will be in the mail this week and we look forward to people having them just before Palm Sunday.

The design was done ourselves (Ten points if you know who we ripped off for the EKG line), so that was free and we got an awesome rate for the printing and mailing from Maverick Creative Group here in Vegas.

Here's to hoping they land in the right hands.

The Good Kind of Hurt

I woke up this morning very sore from yesterday, but it's the kind of hurt that you're proud of because you know that you used your body for something good. Really it wasn't as bad as I imagined it, the cables and the powered speakers were the worst of it (together I think they weighed more than the truck).

My plan for the rest of the night is to do as little as possible while working on my series of sermons for around Easter. Usually, preparing sermons consists of me listening to a lot of music, playing dumb internet games, and reading blogs on the web all mingled with some serious study, a little prayer, a lot of pacing, tons of chicken scratched notes, and an unhealthy amount of talking to myself. It should be a fun night.

Exciting Stuff

We had our first service today and It went great! We got to the school at about 7:30 this morning and it was nonstop until about 1:00 but we had a great time. I know that we are running off excitement right now and come August when it's 120 outside it's going to feel a lot more like work, but right now it feels good. It's just awesome to see something that you've talked about for so long become a reality.

These next few services are still prelaunch as our mailers and street signs won't be out for another week or two, but we are all looking forward to seeing what's going to happen on Easter and the weeks following.

I have so many exciting things going on in my life right now that are about to take place I hardly can keep track of them all, but for the sake of having another list to make my post go on forever here are the things I'm looking forward to in the next few weeks and months to come (in no particular order):

1. Ethan - My son is due to be born in about one month. This will make one girl and one boy for me and though I might change my mind in the future I am 99.999% we are done with the newborn thing after this.

2. Easter - I have no idea how many people are going to show up, but I'm excited for new people to see and have a chance to be a part of what God is doing here at The Venue. Truth be told, I'm more excited for the weeks following Easter to see who catches on to our vision.

3. New House - My house is going to be started in the next few days. It won't be finished until sometime late this year but that's okay, it gives me time to figure out how I'm going to pay for it.

4. New Job - Normally, the only thing I hate more than working is starting new work but if things go well I might be working with one of my best friends which is the only way to go really when it comes to work. I currently work with my best friend Tyson (this is like the 6th job we've had together) and it will be sad not to see him at work anymore, but he'll always be in my heart.

5. Vacation - If all goes according to plan then some of The Venue staff will be going to Santa Barbara this summer for a little R & R. The beach has always been there for me when I've needed to slack off.

6. Tyson and Malene's Birthdays - I don't know if you could say I'm "excited" about this but with all the strangers that have birthdays every day it's good to have it happen to someone you know every once and awhile.

7. Next Sunday - I can't wait until next Sunday when we will have our own chairs and our projector screen as well as some samples of our mailer. Also, our connections pastor, Bekah, will be giving her first sermon for The Venue. Ah, to look forward to church again...

Sunday Should Be Interesting

I just found out that the chairs that have been donated to us didn't get ordered until today. Also, our projector screen and cables will probably not arrive until early next week. There are also about 100 little odds and ends we have to buy in the next three days.

On the bright side, I got the keys to the school today and we are all cleared to be in on Sunday.

There are a lot of little things to stress over, but this is the reason we gave ourselves two weeks in the school before going public. Even when we do launch in three weeks I have come to the conclusion that we don't have to look like we have everything together because we never will. This church will always be a work in progress just as we are all works in progress. We will do the best we can with what we're given where we are and let God worry about the rest.

Here We Go

Our preview services are now officially done! We still are not going to be advertising to the community for a couple more weeks, but we are going to be meeting in the elementary school starting next Sunday morning.

Our last service at our mother church went really well. The Band sounded great, everyone seemed to dig my message, and they even took a offering for us (much needed let me tell you).

We were going to have an evening preview service as well, but we smelled something burning right before service. We decided that burning down our mother church for our last service there wouldn't be a good idea, so we all went out to dinner instead.

Big things are going to be happening the next couple weeks. This should be fun.

Here It Comes

I just found out that the little insurance problem has been fixed and that we are set to start meeting Sunday mornings at the elementary school on March 18th. That makes this Sunday our last at our mother church. We will be taking over the Sunday morning service this week as well as doing our last preview service this Sunday night. Exciting stuff!